The present invention relates generally to the field of telephone and electronic office integration, and more particularly to a method of and system for providing priority call processing based upon voice mail, electronic calendar, and electronic mail status of a calling party or a called party.
Current telephone systems, implemented in circuit switched environments, such as the public switched telephone network (PSTN) or private branch exchange (PBX) networks, or in packet switched environments, such Internet protocol (IP) telephony systems, provide many options for enhancing the usefulness of the system to users. For example, voice mail enables users to have their calls answered by an automated system that records a voice message from the calling party if the called party is unavailable or desires not to take the call. Call forwarding allows a user to have calls to their number forwarded to another number. Call forwarding can be combined with voice mail so that a user can have calls forwarded automatically to voice mail. Certain telephone devices include a do not disturb (DND) key that is used to automatically forward calls to voice mail, a secretary, or a message center.
Voice mail and call forwarding thus enable a user not to be disturbed during meetings or during periods when the user wishes to work without being interrupted with telephone calls. However, there are times that a user would like to receive certain priority calls at the same time the user wishes not to be bothered with normal calls. For example, a user may have a meeting scheduled in the recent past or near future with another party and expect a call from that party regarding the meeting. Similarly, the user may have left an important voice mail message for another party and expect a call from that party. Additionally, the user may send a priority or urgent electronic mail item and expect a call from the recipient. Also, the user may simply wish to receive calls from certain callers or classes of callers at any time. In such cases, the user might wish not to receive most calls, but the user would certainly want to speak immediately to a priority party. Currently, the user must either receive all calls, or monitor his or her voice mail box for messages from the other party. If a caller ID display is available, the calling party must be calling from a recognized phone for the called party to be able to recognize the caller ID.
The present invention provides a method of and system for providing special call processing based upon called party specified masks and the status of electronic mail, electronic calendar, and voice mail items associated with the called party and a calling party. Briefly stated, the system receives a request to set up a call between a calling party number and a called party number. The system determines if the called number is associated with a mask entry that matches the calling number. If so, the system provides special processing of the call based upon the matching mask entry. The mask entry may specified by digits and or wild card characters. Special processing is specified by a disposition code in the matching mask entry.
If the called number is not associated with a mask entry that matches calling number, the system determines if the called party has a call priority setting set to on for at least one of electronic mail, electronic calendar, or voice mail priority processing. If so, the system determines the status of the at least one electronic mail, electronic calendar, and voice mail between the called party and said calling party, and processes the call based upon the status.